The Star Turtle Embarkation
by AWMPerry
Summary: When his other friends drop out, Sheldon is stuck taking Penny to the Discworld Convention in England. It may not be the first time Penny’s made Sheldon blue, but definitely the first time she’s been so literal about it... Rated M for future scenes P/S
1. Chapter 1 A Trio Down To Two

The Star Turtle Embarkation

Title: The Star Turtle Embarkation – Chapter 1: A Trio Down To Two  
Spoilers: None specific, but may be mild general spoilers through season two.  
Rating: PG-13 (Future chapters may sneak up to R for Mildly Mucky)  
Word Count: 1093 (Ch 1)  
Disclaimer: _The Big Bang Theory_ is property of Warner Brothers and CBS, Discworld is property of Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All other IP property of their respective owners, no challenge is intended or financial gain made. The story is fictional, but some of the people aren't entirely; I'd like to say no resemblance to people living or dead is intended, but you can't have everything.

Summary: When his other friends drop out, Sheldon is stuck taking Penny to the Discworld Convention in England. It may not be the first time Penny's made Sheldon blue, but definitely the first time she's been so literal about it...

* * *

A/N: Teaser takes place mid-first season; remainder late second season.

* * *

"All righty then," said Sheldon, hitting a series of keystrokes that would send the confirmation page to both the printer and the PDF archive on his external admin drive. "It's booked. _Three_ tickets" – he shot a glare at Raj – "to the Discworld Convention in Birmingham, England. And Raj, I think it shows a remarkable lack of foresight, letting your sister's wedding fall on that weekend. It's thoughtless."

"Please, like you'd be able to stand up to Missy if she was getting married and wanted you to attend, dude."

Sheldon rolled his eyes.

"I would have no trouble whatever standing up to her." He picked the sheet of inkjet paper out of the printer and blew it gently dry with the carbon dioxide duster on his desk. "Apart from anything else, if she wants me down there, it typically means she's not here."

He cocked his head, as though suddenly realising something.

"Speaking of which, your sister's in Mumbai. The chances of effective retribution at that distance are slim to none."

Raj snorted, pitching his empty takeaway carton into the bin.

"Clearly you've never met my sister. She makes Machiavelli look like a Care Bear."

"He's right, Sheldon," Leonard chimes in from his desk. "She's like the... the _you_ of evil and scheming. I think she's already got a hollow volcano sitting somewhere."

"Hey!" Raj spun, trying for indignant. "That's my sister you're talking about!" But then he fidgeted awkwardly and turned back to Sheldon, who was already engrossed in his computer again. "But yes, she kind of is."

"Fascinating." Sheldon's gaze never left the screen.

"Koothrappali's sister the evil genius is fascinating?" Howard glanced up. "Are we talking, you know, _anatomically_?"

"Fascinating," Sheldon clarified, "that you believe I'm still interested in the conversation." He glanced at the credit card propped up across the F5-F8 keys and typed in the last four digits. "And while you three were uselessly digressing into whatever it was, I finalised our travel arrangements. You should prepare your suitcases and in-flight kits so you're ready to go."

The other three exchanged a look.

"Uh, Sheldon..." Leonard began. "The Con's not for seven months yet."

"Precisely. With emergency drills, packing tests and backup measures, that's barely enough time to prepare a full preparedness plan." He brought up a report template in Word and started typing furiously. "Six months, twenty-nine days, and three hours... Birmingham, here we come."

***

Very nearly seven months later...

***

My work is, without doubt, important. I am humanity's best hope for scientific advancement in any worthwhile field, but I am hampered at every turn by mediocre minds getting in the way with distractions and inanities.

In this particular instance, I was very close to a breakthrough on gluon impactors in a Bose-Einstein condensate. But my calculations were constantly interrupted by a nagging whispering from behind me.

"You've got to tell him."

"Oh, I'm sure it's nothing..."

"Leonard."

"No, it's fine, it can wait."

"Tell him."

"The distraction hasn't got here."

"Leonard, it's next week."

Good Lord, they could get shrill sometimes. I quicksaved the MathCAD file I was working on and turned around.

"I said I'm busy," I reminded them, "not deaf. Leonard, you've got to tell me _what_?"

"Uh, I bought you that Star Trek starship art compendium you wanted. It just hasn't got here yet."

"Oh." I had no recollection of any appropriate occasion, which made the putative gift-giving highly suspect. My gaze settled on the Batman cookie jar on the counter. "What is the awkward blow you're trying... the impact of which you're trying to soften?"

Leonard looked back at Penny, but she crossed her arms and glared at him. Curious. Had he upset her? I would have to investigate and correct his behaviour...

Even curiouser. Where had that thought come from? I started to ponder why Penny being upset bothered me, but by that point Leonard had turned back to me. He was fidgeting.

"I'm not going to the Con. Stephanie's parents have invited me and her –"

"'Her and me'," I corrected him; where people were unreliable, grammar was certain and absolute.

"– _us _up to Portland for her uncle's birthday. It's a sort of family reunion thing."

"No. That is unacceptable."

Absurd. What possible reason would someone have to spend a week with their 'girlfriend' and her parents, when the alternative was an excursion to the hallowed ground of a Discworld convention?

"Uh..." Leonard frowned; whether he was recollecting or fabulating was unclear. "In return, Stephanie promised she'd arrange a full functional MRI for you when you get back. As a sort of goodwill... thing."

I considered this. It was an acceptable gesture. But if I acceded immediately, it would train them to expect concession, so an alteration would be necessary.

"And a full blood panel, plus a voucher for three sputum cultures of my choice at a date to be determined by me in the future." I opened a new document with a contract template and briskly typed out a few simple terms. "One week after my return at the earliest, three months after the inevitable cessation of your relationship at the latest. Do we have a contract?"

Leonard executed the downtrodden shrug that indicated that he would sooner or later accept. Sooner, in this case.

"Fine."

"Excellent." I hit Control-P, sending the contract to the printer. "Sign that, and initial paragraphs three, seven, eleven, thirteen and seventeen."

He snatched the sheet of paper and signed it.

"There," he said, with more venom than I thought necessary. "Happy?"

What did my happiness have to do with any of this? "As happy as can be expected, under the circumstances. A minor degree of digestive distress, but that can probably be explained by your cooking. But what's that got to do with-"

"I'm going to Stephanie's." He picked up his car keys and opened the door.

I looked up, curious at this sudden turn.

"You will of course provide a replacement to take your spot on the trip."

"That's not in the contract," he said with a frankly lupine grin. "Good _night_, Sheldon."

And he had left.

It was true; I had neglected to include a clause about alternates in the contract. If only he hadn't rushed me.

Lessons learned: correctly proofread all contracts before signing.

For now, though, I had a more important problem. I had to find someone to take Leonard's place in the next five days. Raj would be away, Leonard had deserted, Kripke was frankly not an option, and –

"Sheldon?"

– and... Wait. She was still here?

"Penny. You're still here."


	2. Chapter 2 And Then There Were Three

**Title: **The Star Turtle Embarkation – Chapter 2: And Then There Were Three

**Spoilers: **None specific, but may be mild general spoilers through season two.

**Rating: **PG-13 (Future chapters may sneak up to R for Mildly Mucky)

**Word Count: **2100 (Ch 2)

**Disclaimer: **_The Big Bang Theory_ is property of Warner Brothers and CBS, Discworld is property of Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All other IP property of their respective owners, no challenge is intended or financial gain made. The story is fictional, but some of the people aren't entirely; I'd like to say no resemblance to people living or dead is intended, but you can't have everything.

**Summary: **When his other friends drop out, Sheldon is stuck taking Penny to the Discworld Convention in England. It may not be the first time Penny's made Sheldon blue, but definitely the first time she's been so literal about it...

A/N: Reviews are very welcome; things you like, things to improve...

* * *

"_Penny. You're still here."_

"Uh, yeah."

"Are you doing anything next week?" Sheldon had that expression on his face that he saved for times when he thought he was being subtle. Or maybe cunning, it was kinda hard to tell.

"No. No way. I'm not going to England at six days' notice just because Leonard's getting it on up in Portland."

"But you have to! The tickets are booked! The convention is counting on our attendance!"

He waved a sheaf of papers as something he probably thought was evidence.

"Yeah, well, they're not counting on me." She headed for the door.

"Penny..."

She spun, exasperated.

"For heaven's sake, Sheldon, I don't have time! I don't have the time and I don't have the money, and I don't even know what it's about!"

Sheldon looked shocked, but recovered quickly.

"I beg to differ! The tickets are already booked and paid for, and it's too late to cancel them. You would really be doing me... us a favour, increasing the effective received value of the tickets. The alternative is for just me and Howard to go, an alternative which..." He seemed to consider for a moment. "...is unappealing in any number of ways, quite apart from the fact that it is effectively two for the price of three. You would be attending as... well, my guest."

"What, free?" She cocked an eyebrow. "You want to take me to the other side of the world free of charge?"

"Britain isn't really 'the other side of the world' in any accurate way, but yes, that is the general idea. It's either that or waste a ticket, in which case I could have simply burnt the money I spent on it." A thought caught him. "Which would, I suppose, have given me a chance to use spectroscopy to determine the chemical makeup of the hundred-dollar bill, which I've often wondered about. Did you know, it's theorised that the average bill has specimens of seven people's urine and more bacteria and impurities than a sidewalk?"

Penny stood, gaping at him. Then she shook her head, bringing herself back to reality.

"No... no, come on, Sheldon, I can't just disappear for a week. I have work..."

"The Cheesecake Factory is closed for ten days from Tuesday. They're renovating the kitchen. Had you forgotten?" He looked genuinely incredulous.

"Wait, what? No they're not!"

"They are. There's been a notice about it on the door for almost a month."

Penny stared. A very vague memory, blurred by long hours and the occasional seriously slutty Cuba Libre, drifted back. Dammit, Sheldon was right. Again.

"Okay," she conceded. "So maybe I do need a break. But I don't even know anything about this... Disco World thing."

"You have a point." Sheldon stalked to the bookcase and pulled out a slim case with barely a glance. "Here. _Men At Arms_. You have little time, so the audio book will serve you better. And it's 'Discworld'."

Penny read the blurb and looked back up at him.

"Sheldon, this is for smart people."

"Yes."

"I won't get it."

"Don't be absurd."

"Sheldon..."

He fixed her with a gaze. "Your academic record notwithstanding, I have no reason to believe that your intelligence is insufficient to understand the essential elements of the books. You may miss some of the more obscure references, but the search for elucidation is often considered part of the ongoing appeal."

"The search for the what of the what?"

He rolled his eyes – there'd be payback for that sooner or later, she decided – and she could almost hear the gears in his head shifting down to Talking-To-Penny mode.

"I'm _trying_," he said, "to tell you that yes, they are intended for smart people with an inquisitive approach to the world, and that I have no reason to believe that you would find them beyond you."

She tuned her mind to Radio Sheldon and managed to decipher his ramblings.

"Sheldon, are you trying to pay me a compliment?" Okay, so maybe payback wouldn't be quite the bitch she'd been planning.

"Clearly."

"Awww..." Maybe she was making progress after all. "All right," she said with a smile, "I'll come with you."

"Excellent." She thought she caught a flicker of a smile, but it passed too quickly to be sure. Sheldon, meanwhile, returned to his computer. "And now I have to finish the précis for Howard."

Howard. Damn. She'd forgotten about him.

"Oh, hey, that's a thing, I won't have to share a room with him, will I?"

Sheldon glanced up with an expression of horror.

"Good Lord, no! I'll share with him. He was going to have a room to himself, but we'll rearrange things so you get that and he can take Leonard's place."

"Great. I'm not sure all three of us would be coming back otherwise." She saw the text covering his computer screen. "What exactly is that?"

Sheldon followed her gaze.

"Oh, that. It's a brief summary of the Discworld books so far so Howard can maintain an intelligent conversation on Terry Pratchett's works and thus avoid embarrassing us all."

"What about me?"

"Your capacity for intelligent speech isn't inversely tied to your libido."

Was that a compliment? Oh well, she'd take it as such until further evidence presented itse– Where the hell did that come from? And... wait...

"Wait, why does Howard want to go, if he's never read the books?"

Behind them, the door opened.

"Howard claims to be interested in the talks," Sheldon began. "More significantly, in my view, Leonard made the mistake of showing him photos from last time, and women at the con are inordinately fond of corsetry."

"Hey, that wasn't my fault." Leonard. And just as she was getting into the conversation. "I just left the photo album open on my laptop. How was I supposed to know he'd trawl through it?"

"Potato, potahto," Sheldon said, waving away Leonard's objection. "Making those pictures available to him was grotesquely irresponsible." He turned back to his screen. "Imagine what could happen when he finds out about the Guild of Seamstresses!"

"Yeah..." Leonard fidgeted. "That could be bad..."

"Three Mile Island was bad, Leonard. Howard Wolowitz added to an infernal concoction of seamstresses and over-tightened corsets is a recipe for a libidinous supercritical mass of simply apocalyptic proportions. And speaking of libidinous masses, weren't you going to visit Stephanie?"

"She had surgery," Leonard grumbled, as Penny sat down on the couch.

"Fascinating." Sheldon glanced at his computer's clock. "And if _Mythbusters_ hadn't been about to start I might have been interested." He stood, without looking behind him. "Penny, if you want to stay and watch them disprove the ending of _Deep Blue Sea_, you'll have to move out of my spot."

_How the hell did he always know?_ She shuffled over into the middle seat as Sheldon sauntered over from his desk and sat next to her.

As he sat, his knee touched hers. An innocuous nudge, but for a fraction of a second she found herself feeling... something. And that was weird. He was _Sheldon_. She wasn't interested in him, she'd never been, and she was pretty sure he wasn't interested in her, and why the hell did it feel like her knee had just nudged one of the electric fences back home?

She curled up on the couch, hiding her confusion and drawing her legs up under her. Sheldon looked oblivious as always; maybe, just maybe, his hand was touching the spot where her knee had hit, but that could mean anything.

They sat in relative silence for a while, Sheldon watching the TV intently and occasionally butting in with complaints about the Mythbusters' research methodology. He left the apartment during the first commercial break, returning a few minutes later writing on a notepad and ignoring Penny's questioning glance. Then, out of the blue, just after Tory had fired a harpoon into a giant foam shark:

"What size breastplate do you take?"

Penny blinked.

"What? Why?"

He looked at her as though it were obvious. "For your costume, of course."

"Costume?" She raised an eyebrow.

He sighed, as though tired of having to explain _everything._

"This is a Discworld convention. Hall costumes are highly recommended, particularly for first-time attendees." He sounded like he was reading off a script. "I'm reliably informed that they help 'break the ice'." He paused. "Given the aesthetics demonstrated by your Queen Penelope avatar, Angua would be a good choice."

She rolled her eyes. Wackadoodle.

"Whatever, Sheldon. How do I know my size?"

"Ideally you should be measured by an expert costume maker."

She turned to him, raising herself slightly on her haunches.

"That Flash costume you've got, who made that?"

"I did, of course."

"It's pretty good, right?"

"It's ninety-seven per cent accurate to the comic books."

"So you're kind of an expert?"

"In _so_ many fields. But yes. Why?"

"Just thinking." She smiled at him, although she wasn't sure why. "All right, so what, you need to copy one of my tops?"

"It's estimated that eighty per cent of all women have incorrectly sized brassieres. I had hoped you had been more diligent, but unfortunately my research was inconclusive just now when I checked your underwear drawer."

*******

"You did _what_?"

She had drawn herself up to a kneeling posture, glaring at me. This was, I would note, an unusual perspective for me; I am not accustomed to looking up at people, which my seated position necessitated given her relative altitude.

It was a most uncomfortable situation. I don't look up at people, it upsets the order of the world. But the solution was, at least, simple in this case. I would quite simply stand up, thus reconfiguring things to a more acceptable state of affairs.

So I stood, just as she directed another tirade at me, jabbing an accusatory finger where my elbow had been a moment ago. Unfortunately I had risen too fast, leading to three consequences which, while unfortunate on their own, combined into one disastrous one.

Firstly, I rose too quickly, thus reducing the blood pressure in my brain and inducing a brownout; while I normally moderate my movements as a prophylactic measure against orthostatic hypotension, I misjudged the speed this time as a result of the stress of the argument. Consequent to the lowered cerebral perfusion, I was thus suffering from dizziness, poor balance and blurred vision, which exacerbated point number three, which I'll get to in a moment.

Secondly, my abrupt change in position caused a shift in the couch cushions; minor, but sufficient to affect Penny's balance. She, in obeisance to the laws of gravity and preservation of inertia (which, I suppose, should teach her not to jab at me so emphatically), pitched forward and downward at roughly the same time as I rose.

Thirdly, as I was turning to deploy a scathing retort, my head and upper body were facing her, although the brownout meant I had neither the vision to see her plummeting towards me nor the balance to react adequately on impact.

The result is that we met somewhere in the middle, and things started to go wrong.

I reached out to catch her, but even my admittedly superior brain power was unable, given the lack of reliable data, to accurately compute... contact surfaces, if you will. The female chest, it appears, is not an effective grip surface for arresting a fall, regardless of its slight cushioning effect.

It is curious, in its way, how time seems to slow in times of stress. It's an evolved neurological response, of course, enabling cavemen more perceived time to act just before they got eaten by sabretoothed tigers (although I must confess to always having a certain fondness for the genus _Smilodon_, at least compared to that ridiculous tortoiseshell cat Missy keeps, but I digress), but in this case it did little but enable me to experience the full horror of the... collision.

Penny's impact causes me to lose my balance conclusively, imparting an impulse directly away from her and with a certain rotational component. This prompts my knees to bend, and I fall backwards, where the couch breaks my fall – and I break Penny's.

She decelerates rapidly, and her face stops less than an inch from my own; had our noses been aligned it would certainly have resulted in epistaxis and severe pain at the very least. But instead, almost continuing her motion from the fall, she locks her gaze with mine for a couple of seconds, then briefly closes the distance to my mouth and aligns her lips to it and –

_Gliiiip._


	3. Chapter 3 Things Take Flight

"Danger! Danger!"

"Sheldon, what the hell..." Leonard turned just in time to see Sheldon round the corner into the hall, and a moment later heard his door slam. He stared after him for a moment, then turned to the couch where Sheldon had been a moment earlier.

Penny lay on the floor beside it, grimacing up at the ceiling. Leonard put his coffee down and went to help her up.

"You, uh, want to catch me up?"

"Nothing." She flopped down on the couch – in Sheldon's corner – and rubbed her shoulder. "It's my fault. I, uh, think I gave him a tiny bit of a shock."

"You gave him a shock? Are you all right?" Her shoulder must have dinged the coffee table; it was already starting to bruise. "You want some, uh... ice or something? I'm pretty sure Sheldon has an ice pack in the medical kit. What happened?"

"Honest, Leonard, I'm fine." She looked embarrassed, not to mention thoughtful. "I'll just go back home and –"

She'd tried to stand up, but fallen back onto the couch. Leonard grabbed the blanket off the chair and shook it out.

"Okay, Penny... Penny? Penny, look at me."

"Hm?" She looked at him, focussing with some difficulty.

"Yeah, you're not going anywhere. Come on, lie down. Stephanie's coming over in an hour anyway on the way back from the hospital, so you just get some rest and I'll ask her to, I dunno, make sure you don't have a concussion or something. Okay?"

She looked at him blearily, then nodded and laid back, curling up at that end of the couch. He picked Sheldon's bag off the floor and snuck it in under her head along with a small pillow, before draping the blanket over her. She smiled, snuggling into the cushions.

Leonard headed over to check up on Sheldon. But out of the corner of his eye, just before he left the living room, he saw her wrap an arm around the bag, snuggling up to it as if it were a teddy bear.

That, he decided, would be something to ask Sheldon about.

His door was shut, of course. He didn't respond to a half dozen knocks, which was unusual in itself, so Leonard opened the door and looked in.

"Sheldon?"

The room was dark, with just the evening light from outside sneaking in through the window.

"Sheldon, are you okay?"

Leonard turned the light on.

Sheldon was sitting in the farthest corner of the room, curled up in the gap between the corner and his dresser. His eyes darted everywhere, panicky. This was going to be bad.

"Sheldon, what happened?"

He just whimpered, scrabbling briefly against the fake wood floor to press himself further into the corner.

"Sheldon?"

Nothing. Leonard sighed, glanced around.

Sheldon's Next Generation limited edition comm badge with magnetic backing lay in its usual place in the bookcase, and it gave Leonard an idea. He picked it up, and attached it to his sweater. Here goes nothing, he thought.

He tapped the badge, and the sound module chirped loudly. Sheldon twitched, his eyes focussing on something in the middle distance.

"Enterprise to Lieutenant Commander Cooper, report!"

Sheldon straightened markedly, his right hand instinctively jabbing the spot on his chest where the badge would sit.

"Cooper here."

Leonard grinned. It had been that or the 'rebooting Terminator' gimmick, but that had some nasty side effects.

"We need you back on board, Commander. Right now."

"Yes. Of course. Yes..." His face firmed up, and he seemed to rejoin the land of the living. More or less.

*** * ***

Curious.

"Leonard? You're in my bedroom again."

"What happened with Penny?"

"I..." Even odder. I couldn't remember. Or more accurately, I could remember something, but nothing even remotely plausible. "I don't remember." I considered again. "We should recheck the best before dates on this morning's eggs. Clearly something I have eaten has been deficient or host to some form of psychotropic bacterium. The alternative is beyond the realms of probability."

"What alternative? I'm pretty sure you haven't ingested any hallucinogens in the last few days. At least," he added, "no more than usual."

"The alternative, I fear, is that Penny kissed me. On the... oral region. With lingual involvement and considerable labial compression."

"Yeah, you probably want to be careful how you phrase that..." His brain caught up with his ears. "She kissed you?"

"Yes."

"So that's what's bothering you?"

"Distasteful and unhygienic as the experience was, if it happened, which it of course patently didn't and could not have..."

"Sheldon..."

A realisation struck me. "...I believe it may have precipitated a cascading release of dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins in my hypothalamus and septum pellucidium. Quite against all reason."

"Sheldon, are you saying..."

I considered the overwhelming neurological, psychological and, admittedly, physiological evidence.

"I will of course have to research the matter, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that I enjoyed it."

*** * ***

Sheldon was still rambling, but Leonard wasn't listening. Sheldon, asexual mitosist, whose reproductive system he had assumed would involve the phrase 'batteries not included', had enjoyed kissing Penny. Inadvertently, but still. And Penny had initiated it.

He glanced out the window, vaguely expecting to see a squadron of pigs fly past.

"...has of necessity forced me to reevaluate the psychosocial paradigm in effect between Penny and me," Sheldon was saying, "which is complicated further by the pre-existing liaison between you and her..."

"Wait, why does that complicate it?" Leonard frowned, perching himself on the edge of the bed. Sheldon didn't even blink.

"My observations indicate that it's considered impolite to 'date' a person one's friend has attempted to establish a romantic or sexual attachment with."

Leonard sighed and shrugged, staring at the floor for a moment before looking back at Sheldon.

"That cat died a long time ago." He stood, and held out a hand to pull Sheldon up. "Come on. Penny hit her head pretty hard, and you two probably need to talk."

Sheldon nodded reluctantly, and let himself be pulled to his full height. It took longer than Leonard had expected.

*** * ***

When they returned to the living room, Stephanie met them in the corridor.

"How is she?" Sheldon asked abruptly, before Leonard had time to even open his mouth.

"Let her get some rest, and she'll be fine after a good night's sleep," Stephanie replied. "She has a very mild MTBI, but it should clear by tomorrow." She smirked. "She told me what happened, by the way. You'll make a cute couple."

Sheldon goggled at her. "No, I don't think so. We're not a... I... No. Leonard?"

"Be nice, Stephanie. He can't do teasing right now." He put an arm around her waist and ushered her towards his room, glancing back at where Sheldon was timidly approaching Penny. "Let's give them a minute."

*** * ***

"Penny."

"Sheldon." She tried to scramble to her feet, but fell back onto the cushions. Was that a flicker of reaction she saw? Almost as if... nah, he wouldn't try to catch her. Probably.

"I would normally draw your attention to the fact that you're in my spot –"

"Aw, Sheldon..."

"– but in light of the circumstances, and bearing in mind that I was the inadvertent cause of your vertiginous condition I think it only fair to make a temporary exception for you until your current condition passes." She gaped at him. But he wasn't finished. "And... I apologise for my precipitate reaction which led to your injury."

"For your what to the what now?"

"For launching you off me, causing you to bounce off the table and impact the floor."

"Oh." She blinked, still woozy. She reached out a wobbly hand. "Apology accepted. And, uh, I shouldn't have given you a shock like that. We good?"

Sheldon stared contemplatively at the hand for a moment, then took it.

"Agreed."

"Now sit your ass down, staring up at you like this is freaking me out."

He looked around, finally perching daintily on Leonard's armchair.

"Ah." As he watched, Penny was already starting to take Stephanie's advice, drifting off to sleep.

Just before he dozed off as well, he thought he heard her mumble, "...just wanted to open the box..."

*** * ***

He woke up at six in the morning. She still hadn't let go of his hand.

A few days later, two days before they left, a twelve-pound parcel arrived from for Sheldon.

*** * ***

At LAX, Penny glanced through the archway as Howard walked towards it.

"Do you think he remembered not to wear one of those huge belt buckles?"

"Unlikely," Sheldon said. "But even his taste in accoutrements shouldn't be a problem. They'll just tell him to put it through the machine and he'll..." He glanced through the archway. "Oh dear."

"What, Sheldon?" Penny followed his gaze, then – "Oh, crap."

The security officer waiting airside was young, attractive – and female. Abundantly female.

"Oh, Howard," she whispered under her breath, "please don't say something stupid."

Sheldon sighed and hefted his satchel onto the x-ray's belt.

"Statistically unlikely."

The arch beeped as Howard and his belt buckle went through... and Penny could just imagine the results.

As it turned out, she didn't need to.

"Why hello," Howard leered, waggling his eyebrows at the young TSA officer stepping towards him, brandishing a metal detector wand. "I think I know what you're thinking."

"Uh-huh." She switched the wand on and stepped closer. "Raise your arms out from your sides."

"Oh God," Penny whispered, "this is gonna be bad."

"You're thinking, 'Is that a bomb in his pocket, or is he just pleased to see me?'"

Penny winced.

*** * ***

"I guess there's always a chance he'd enjoy being strip searched," she said, rummaging around the side of her seat. "Sheldon, you're sitting on my seat belt."

Sheldon started to reach down the side of his seat, but her hand darted in and retrieved it first. He looked as if he was about to say something, but thought better of it and returned to the train wreck that was Howard.

"I expect not. TSA protocols mean that the screener searching him is unlikely to be the woman he intended." Was she imagining things, or did a tiny smile flicker across his face? "In fact, it's unlikely to be a woman at all."


End file.
